George Kliavkoff needs to resign as Pac-12 commissioner

Now that the Pac-12 Conference is down to four schools, the conference — such as it is — is basically dead.

Maybe it will merge with the Mountain West and continue under the Pac-12 name, but that’s a very technical distinction. The longtime schools that  comprised the Pac-12 have mostly left. USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington are gone. You don’t really have a Pac-12, if you don’t have any of those four schools.

Arizona, Arizona State, Utah and Colorado are all much younger schools relative to the Pacific Northwest and Los Angeles schools. They are — in a historical context — not as significant. Nevertheless, when a conference shrinks from 12 to four, and the only prospect of survival lies in merging with a lower-tier conference that includes Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado State, something has gone very wrong.

Therefore, if we are to consider the idea that the Pac-12 will retain its name (like the label on a soup can) and its Power Five/NCAA Tournament status, the man who presided over an unquestioned disaster, who failed at the task he was hired to perform (getting the media rights deal done) — should not be allowed to handle merger negotiations.

George Kliavkoff needs to resign.

People who made a mess don’t get to clean it up. Others do.

This begins our look at how a merger with the Mountain West should be handled. We continue with other recommendations below:

GLORIA NEVAREZ BECOMES NEW COMMISSIONER

Mountain West Commissioner Gloria Nevarez should be installed as the new commissioner of the Pac-12 and should preside over the merger of the conferences. She, unlike Kliavkoff, did not mess anything up. She should get the chance to run the show. It would send the unmistakable message: New leadership exists. This is not the old Pac-12.

MOUNTAIN PACIFIC CONFERENCE

Does the Pac-12 deserve to have its name intact after all that we’ve seen? It’s hard to say yes. A merger with the Mountain West should lead to the new name for the conference: Mountain Pacific. Pretty simple: Each side gets half of the name.

Keep in mind that before Arizona and Arizona State created the Pac-10 Conference in 1978, the league was known as the Pac-8. It changed whenever the membership size changed. A possible merger with the Mountain West would involve a majority of MW schools coming in, so the idea that this is truly a Pac-12 is, in a real sense, empirically false. Only if the Pac-12 was raiding the Mountain West — as a strong-arm tactic and a hostile takeover — would the Pac-12 label deserve to continue. Not here. Not under these circumstances.

Pac-12? No. The Mountain Pacific Conference is better.

STANFORD JOINS IN WOMEN'S BASKETBALL

Unless Stanford can pull off a move to the Big Ten, there’s really no other place to go for the Cardinal in women’s basketball than the merger with the Mountain West.

Tara VanDerveer, the legendary Stanford coach, played at Indiana and coached at Ohio State. Going to the Big Ten would be a natural fit. If the Big Ten doesn’t want Stanford, however, there’s really not much else for the Cardinal to do. They might consider the West Coast Conference, but there would probably be more money in a Mountain West merger.

TOUGH DECISIONS

A merger might never get off the ground — not if Stanford and Cal go to the Big Ten or if Oregon State and Washington State get the Big 12 invite they’re praying for. However, if Stanford and Cal don’t get invited to the Big Ten, the new conference has to give Stanford a reason to put its football program in the Mountain Pacific as opposed to choosing independence (which it could).

This will necessarily involve some tough choices and some cruelty. (Hey, this is going to be a mess. It will not be painless. It’s what happens when a conference dies.)

One obvious choice: Hawaii gets booted off the island, so to speak. Requiring Stanford to travel to Hawaii on a regular basis would not seem like something the Cardinal would enjoy. If they’re not going to get Big Ten TV money, asking the Cardinal to travel long distances in a much smaller and less lucrative conference seems like a no-go.

Sorry, Rainbow Warriors. Life isn’t fair. You might have heard that a time or two.

ADDITIONS

The Mountain Pacific (or whatever the new conference is called) should invite SMU, a school the Pac-12 talked to over the past 12 months. Select AAC schools should be considered for membership. Tulane would be another.

SUBTRACTIONS

If Stanford, Cal, Oregon State and Washington State are going to be part of this new conference, they need better partners and more revenue boosters such as SMU, with its presence in the Dallas TV market, and Tulane in New Orleans. Bringing those schools in means kicking other schools out.

We already mentioned Hawaii. Nevada, Wyoming, Utah State and San Jose State have to at least be considered as possible candidates for removal from the new conference.

REMINDER

The four Pac-12 survivors joining the full (current) Mountain West sounds good until you realize it would create a 16-team conference in which TV revenue has to be split 16 ways. Creating a new 12-team conference — which would mean shoving away several current Mountain West schools and forcing them to join the AAC or maybe even Conference USA — gives the Pac-12 refugees comparatively more revenue, since they would be splitting the pie with four fewer conference members.

Again: Tough decisions will be required. It’s not fun.

IF ALL OF THIS SEEMS VERY HARSH, THERE'S A REASON FOR IT

The reason all of this is being discussed is that George Kliavkoff and the Pac-12 CEO Group failed. We’re not being harsh because we’re monsters. We’re being harsh because the collapse of the Pac-12, which was quite preventable, has occurred under the watch of spectacularly ineffective leaders, continuing a clown car of failed leadership that has lasted for over a decade going back to Larry Scott. When a conference collapses, tough realities and brutal decisions will be involved. This is what it looks like when a building is reduced to rubble and the clean-up work begins.

Of course it’s going to be ugly.

NEW STORY: AAC TRYING TO LURE REMAINING PAC-12 SCHOOLS

AAC IS NOT AS ATTRACTIVE AS MOUNTAIN WEST MERGER

The AAC would not be as attractive as a merger with the Mountain West, but it’s not a surprise the AAC would make this overture. It wants to give teams more options. There certainly isn’t anything wrong from the AAC’s point of view in merely talking with more schools. That can’t hurt.

KEY POINT ABOUT THE AAC

The AAC trying to bring the four schools into the fold is significant in this respect: The AAC would love to become the fifth Power Five conference. If the Pac-12 dies and is abandoned, it loses Power Five status. If the conference merges with the Mountain West — not as a hostile takeover, but as a mutually-agreed-upon arrangement — the Pac-12 (in a very different and diminished configuration) would preserve its College Football Playoff and NCAA Tournament revenue distributions.

The AAC and Mountain West have been rivals and competitors in the Group of Five. The AAC is also trying to make sure the Mountain West doesn’t execute a hostile takeover of the Pac-12 to become that fifth Power Five school. There’s a reason the AAC did what it did.

POSTSCRIPT

This Monday maneuver by the ACC reinforces why George Kliavkoff needs to go. He can’t be given the privilege or responsibility of negotiating this delicate situation. He failed. Gloria Nevarez deserves this opportunity instead.

Story originally appeared on Trojans Wire